Heidi
Director: Alain Gsponer * Cast: Anuk Steffen, Bruno Ganz, Quirin Agrippi, Isabelle Ottmann, Jella Haasse, Katharina Schuettler (2015. 111 minutes).
This is the latest of the many film adaptations of the Swiss novelist Johanna Spyri’s 19th century children’s classic. It tells the story of a young girl growing up in the 19th century Europe against a scenic Alpine background. Heidi is orphaned as a baby and brought up by her maternal grandmother and aunt Dete, a stern disciplinarian. Dete deposits the girl with Heidi’s paternal Grandfather Alpöhi living alone and embittered in a remote cabin in the Alps. The grumpy old man initially refuses to accommodate her, but Heidi cheerfully accepts his coldness and he soon grows to love her and warms up to the role of a loving grandfather. Heidi is intelligent and simple. She makes friends with a local goatherd Peter who lives with his mother, Brigitte, and his blind maternal grandmother and they accept her as part of their family. Three years later aunt Dete returns to takes Heidi away by trick to act as companion to Clara, a wheelchair-bound rich girl. Country-bred Heidi feels homesick and out of place not knowing the manners and etiquettes of the sophisticated. Heidi’s longing for her mountain home become serious when she takes to sleepwalking, scaring the people in the house at night. Clara’s father takes the girl back to her grandfather under the psychiatrist’s advice, which upsets Clara. But Heidi happily reunites with the changed Alöphi who lets her go to school and soon she is visited by Clara, who regains the use of her legs and when her family visits them they are overwhelmed by joy. The movie captivates by the running theme of reformation and family relationships.
Newton’s Grace
Director: John Jackman * Cast: Erik Nelson, John Jackman, Landon Wall, Jim Mckeny (2017. 84 minutes)
This is the true story of a real “Prodigal Son,” John Newton, who is known to the Christian world for his classic hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ which sprang from his conversion experience.
John Newton was a British sailor, slave trader, who at one time was himself enslaved in Africa, and later converted to become a great pastor of the Anglican church in the mature years of his life. He was spiritual adviser to the British parliamentarian William Wilberforce who fought to end slavery and slave trade in the British domains.
His father was a sea captain who was mostly absent from his home leaving the little boy to be brought up by the mother who taught John to read scriptures and pray. Traumatized by his mother’s death and the father’s remarriage, the unloved and unwanted boy nursed a deep rage inside making him a delinquent. Expelled from school for indiscipline, Newton’s father took him to the sea to work as a cabin boy on board merchant ships, where also he got severe punishment for minor offenses. He abandoned all faith in God and became a hardened man. He continued to suffer brutal punishment on board the ships. In the meanwhile he fell in love with a girl in England and looked forward to marriage. But this was not to be since he was trapped into slavery by one of his rivals who sold him to a white slaveholder and his black wife in Africa. It kept him away from home for years and out of contact with anyone. After being rescued from slavery he was promoted to midshipman and worked on slave trading ships, and was also forced to serve the royal Navy in War against his will. Caught in a violent storm, he has a miraculous delivery which reveals the meaning of his old dream, leading to his conversion.
Prof Gigy Joseph
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